Trump’s secretary of the interior, Montana Republican Ryan Zinke, has decided to ingratiate himself with his state’s voters by hypocritically immunizing them from his actions as a shill for big industry and an environmental nightmare. The Great Falls Tribune reports that Zinke, using his position of power, plans to push the U.S. to appeal a judge’s ruling that allows a private drilling lease on the land—something that was canceled by President Obama—to go forward.
Zinke said it would be inappropriate to allow drilling in northwestern Montana's Badger-Two Medicine area, site of the creation story for the Blackfoot tribes. He's asked government attorneys to appeal a September ruling that reinstated a nearly 10-square-mile oil and gas lease in the area bordering the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier National Park.
The good news is that this is the kind of thing one would hope our government would do to protect not only Native lands, but all of our public lands. The bad news is that this move is about as genuine as a Trump-dollar bill. All you need to look at is Zinke’s handling of every other state not named Montana to see that Secretary Zinke has one job: to open up public lands to private interests.